


Spelling Matters

by Kyn_Moonlight (Kyn_Moonligjt)



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: (not main characters), Animal Transformation, Confusion, Gen, M/M, Magical Accidents, Mistakes, Misunderstandings, Monsters, Spelling & Grammar, Witcher Contracts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27622330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyn_Moonligjt/pseuds/Kyn_Moonlight
Summary: A cautionary tale about spelling when spelling.Geralt and Jaskier go off to hunt an Ekhidna, but that’s not what they find. Well, not exactly.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	Spelling Matters

**Author's Note:**

> Me: Writing an entirely different fanfic, like, hmm, I’ll throw in a Witcher-verse monster I’ve heard of... Let me look up details... wait, how can a little porcupine-thing be such a threat to Geralt?  
> I had to Fic it.
> 
> Just silliness all around.
> 
> Image reference; Google search (Echidna) and Witcher fandom wiki (Ekhidna).  
> https://g.co/kgs/DTmGmV  
> https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Ekhidna
> 
> Or see my Tumblr post bemoaning this very fact for the echidna vs ekhidna images:  
> https://kynmoonlight.tumblr.com/post/630072471281958913/lol-why-spelling-matters-writing-fanfic-like

“What’ve you got?” Jaskier asked, crowding against Geralt’s shoulder to look at the paper the Witcher had pulled off the notice board.

“Ekhidna.”

“Ooh, that’s like a siren?”

“Hmm. Bigger. Stronger.”

“Um, isn’t the coast still like half a league away?”

“Mm,” Geralt agreed absently, head tilted as he took a deep breath of the westerly breeze. “Saltwater inlet not far outside town. I’m guessing that’s what ‘near Blue Marsh’ means.” He showed Jaskier the location on the notice and started walking.

“That’s not how Ekhidna is supposed to be spelled.” Jaskier pointed as he caught up.

Geralt shrugged “Not everyone is an Oxenfurt graduate.”

The “Blue Marsh” was kind of a grayish brown marsh when they scouted the area. Geralt cautioned Jaskier to stay well back from the water, so he waited on a sandy stretch that wasn’t too boggy this time of day while the Witcher checked out the surrounding area.

“Hm. Nothing,” Geralt reported on his return. “Some torn up areas where the marsh meets the water, but it looks like if there was something here, it’s moved off.”

“That’s nice,” Jaskier said, distracted. He paused and turned his focus back to Geralt. “I mean, lucky for the townspeople that there’s no more danger. Unlucky for us that means there’s no coin either. But, hey, look at this cute little thing.”

Geralt followed his indication to the spikey little hedgehog-like creature, placidly licking up ants, it’s little pink tongue poking out of a long narrow snout. Beak? He wasn’t sure about ‘cute’ but it was small and harmless looking.

“Oh, Geralt, the poor thing got stranded out here when the tide washed into the reeds and blocked the thoroughfare.”

“An arm’s width of sandbar is hardly a thoroughfare.”

“Well it is if you’re the size of a soup bowl! We have to rescue him! This spot will be completely underwater by sunset.”

Geralt sighed as if very put upon, but waited while Jaskier scooped the little animal up in his folded doublet and then helped him pick his way back through the shallowest part of marsh.

“You’re not keeping that stupid whatever-it-is as a pet,” Geralt warned when they set up camp for the night.

“Geralt! Don’t call Pinchy stupid! She’s very sensitive.” Jaskier offered the creature another bit of plant, trying to find out what it liked to eat. He sighed. “And we’ll find her a nice home in the morning far enough away from the marsh and the busy unsafe road, with plenty of other whatever she is to play with and whatever they like to eat to keep her content.”

They’d actually tried to go back to town, but the first person they met started ranting fearfully about ‘freaks of nature’ and ‘abominations’ - which wasn’t that unusual of an occurrence to witchers - but when the comments turned to ‘four dicks’ and ‘tummy pockets with naked babies’ they took themselves and the unwelcome pinchy critter back out of the settlement quickly.

Jaskier left “Pinchy’ (whose tummy pocket -- thankfully without any naked baby Pinchies -- apparently meant she was a she) rooting for insects and sat down to scribble some lyrics on the back of Geralt’s now-irrelevant monster notice, flipping it over again while he contemplated any possible rhymes for pinchy, and tried to recall enough of his boring natural sciences class to figure out what animal was like a hedgehog but not, with maybe a bit of anteater thrown in. And regretting that info from classes that were boring to an aspiring bard could have been useful to an actual bard.

He hummed a bit, and corrected the ‘k’ in Ekhidna on the paper, unable to stand looking at the misspelling anymore.

“Geralt!” he screamed as the ground shook, and tiny spikes and claws stretched up and _up_ and up into scales, wings, a siren tail and… he tore his gaze away for a terrified peek at the notice and back at the growing monster. “ _Geralt!_ ” he called again, a little more frantically to the Witcher who was running back from his dinner-hunting excursion in the nearby woods.

Panting, Jaskier hastily rubbed his corrective pencil line off the notice while backing away from the sudden Ekhidna.

Several things happened at once. Geralt stepped past him, sword in one hand, shoving him to a marginally safer place behind him with the other. Most of the pencil lead finally rubbed off the paper. And the Ekhidna shuddered and faded out around the edges, and shrunk back down to…

“An Echidna!” Jaskier said.

“It was! Where did… What the fuck?”

Jaskier sat hard, right on the ground in shock, waving the slightly crumpled notice at Geralt in insufficient explanation while he caught his breath.

The silver sword hung down in Geralt’s hand as he touched his medallion. “It was vibrating, then it just stopped when the Ekhidna turned into a …” He pointed in lieu of calling Pinchy a ‘whatever-it-is’ again.

“An Echidna.” Jaskier repeated. “With a ‘c’. I remembered that’s what they’re called. Not a ‘k’.”

“Not OK?”

“K.” Jaskier climbed back to his feet and traced a line over the ‘c’ in the misspelled monster name on the notice as he showed it to Geralt, careful that the lead didn’t mark back over the faint erased line changing it into a ‘k’.

“Some kind of magic? Curse? Like a ... what? A _spelling spell_?”

Geralt snorted. “That’s absurd!”

“Do you really want me to change it again to see?”

“No! Once was more than enough.”

The Witcher, Bard and Echidna sat around the fire later that evening debating the issue. At least, the first two did. The third just blinked at them with shiny dark eyes.

“But why would a sorcerer curse a siren to turn into a hedgehog if townspeople spelled it’s name wrong? And how could he even know that would happen?” Geralt growled, angry enough at dealing with magic without having to deal with nonsensical bizarre random magic.

“I think,” Jaskier mused, “I think she must not really be an Ekhidna or an Echidna.” He hummed looking at the notice page with caution. “Do you think that a mage used a written spell to change something - or someone - into an Ekhidna for whatever unfathomable mage reason, and there was enough magic bound up in the spell that when whoever wrote up the notice spelled it with a ‘c’ like little Pinchy here, that’s what it changed her into?”

Geralt grumbled in very begrudging agreement. “Completely ridiculous! But evidence seems to hold that up.”

“The _fuck_ is wrong with mages?”

“Who knows.”

Jaskier laughed grimly. “Well, do you think we should try to break the spell?”

That led to another discussion between the three of them. Although Jaskier was the only one soliciting Pinchy’s opinions, and she was, predictably, unable to share them if she had any.

Eventually, it ended up with Geralt leaning over Jaskier’s shoulder, reminding him of their carefully agreed-upon wording while the bard wrote it out over ‘Echidna’ on the postbill.

Jaskier, always the optimist, had draped a cloak over the back of the tiny creature, “because after all she’s been through she shouldn’t have the added trauma of turning back naked with two strangers.”

Geralt, with classic witcher skepticism, held his sword in his hand behind Jaskier’s back just in case, ready to jump in front of the bard to defend him if things went poorly.

“... true form,” they finished verbally and in print, together.

Pinchy shuddered and grew once more under the fabric. To both their relief, stopping at approximately person scale proportions rather than overgrowing that to super-Siren-size.

Moments later, she stood gathering the fabric around what appeared to be a normal human form, looking down at herself, at the Witcher, the bard, the paper and quill in the bard’s hand.

As Jaskier babbled out a greeting, introductions and explanation all in one jumbled sentence, their transformed guest blinked, sighed, and finally nodded.

“The _fuck_ is wrong with mages?” she demanded.

“Who knows.” Geralt and Jaskier agreed.

-

**Author's Note:**

> Footnote: The appropriate tone of voice for “Who knows” is the half- resigned, half-exasperated attitude of Arthur in The Tick cartoon. … Or me with several chronic illnesses trying to explain another undiagnosable symptom.


End file.
